1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed toward systems for auditing and restricting software usage, and related methods.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many systems for the protection of software products against piracy and abuse of copyright exist today. Popular approaches described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,490,216 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,243,468 link the license of the user of the software to a specific hardware platform by devising a unique identifier from the measurable characteristics, settings and identifiers already present within the computing hardware and its attached peripherals. With the above described method, the protected software communicates with an authorization authority, usually an Internet based online server, controlled by the software publisher. This communication is needed to ensure that the licensed party does not exceed the usage rights of the license that has been granted by the publisher.
The systems used in the art keep a record of how many devices have been authorized to run against each license, and when a certain predefined limit has been exceeded, the authorization server denies the software users request to run additional copies of the software on additional devices. For example, a publisher might allow five copies to be made and used of their copyrighted software for each user license sold. The first five requests made to the authorization authority may be allowed however the sixth and subsequent requests would be denied. Possibly the licensee would be encouraged to acquire an additional license.
This system has drawn criticism from software buyers since many users expect to be able to use software they have purchased on as many devices as they want as long as they own and use the devices. Additionally software buyers are changing, upgrading and replacing their computing devices on a more regular basis as people use computers more and more. This in turn requires additional flexibility on the part of the authorization authority to compensate for reasonable fluctuations in the usage circumstances of users protected under laws such as the Fair Use Act.
Software buyers may be dissatisfied with current authorization systems due to their inability to determine the difference between legitimate users, that may reasonably require a large number of copies of software for use on their own computing devices, and illegal copies made by pirates and or others who willfully abuse license terms by making indiscriminate copies for other users such as sharing over peer to peer software distribution networks.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide the ability to monitor and measure the usage of their software and to allow/disallow the running of licensed software over the complete life and usage of the software product.